Mel Siff Blog

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We often come across endless debates about the risk of using plyometrics, but
the case against the latter is usually poorly researched or emotively
argued, so let’s see if we can address a related issue in some more depth:

Is it possible to develop explosive speed and power without using plyometric
training? Can anyone quote past or present examples of world class
‘explosive’ athletes who have achieved their results without plyometrics or
combinations of plyometrics and free weights? In responding to these
queries, we also need to ask if it possible to entirely avoid the use of some
form of plyometric ACTION in sports training.

What does the example of gymnastics teach us, knowing that large numbers of
elite gymnasts do not use formal weight training or plyometrics?

How many elite Weightlifters use plyometric training (as opposed to fairly
conventional jumps)?

In answering these questions, let us draw upon logical science and practical
experience and avoid being drawn into the highly emotional territory which so
often characterises HIT and ‘Superslow’ discussions on this sort of topic.

Mel Siff
Denver, USA

All too often, personal trainers and coaches seem to regard “cheating” as
some sort of heinous crime against the ethics and laws of strength training.
This attitude unfortunately disguises the fact that cheating can be carried
out usefully or dangerously. For example, bouncing a bar directly off the
sternum during the bench press or bouncing off relaxed knees at the bottom of
a full squat are both unwise and potentially dangerous ways of “cheating”.
We are all familiar with many such examples of inadvisable and unsafe ways of
cheating, so let us rather examine the possible merits of more intelligent
“cheating”.

For example, cheating allows one to operate in a different way over one’s
strength curve and actually produces a different strength curve to achieve a
certain activity goal. The manufacturers of variable resistance machines
would have you believe that the use of cams, hydraulic systems and levers is
the only way to enable you to adjust to the varying leverages of a given
joint action. However, one can use cheating to take you past a weaker region
and enable you to load the stronger region, if you wish to overload
eccentrically or concentrically in a given region.

Contrary to what so many average personal trainers often believe, cheating is
not necessarily counterproductive or unsafe – it may actually produce
superior results, if one knows how and when to cheat over the full range of
joint action.

Cheating can permit one to produce a very different and more appropriate
’strength’ (torque, power or force) curve to enable one to overcome a load
more competently and safely. Very often, adherents of the slow training
philosophies militate against the power clean or derivates of it, and even
refer to such movements as ‘cheating’ movements which make allegedly
‘unsafe’ use of momentum and ballistic activity.

In fact, this type of ‘cleaning’ movement is a far more efficient way of
lifting a bar from the ground to the chest compared with the crude sort of
deadlift, reverse curl, upright row combination that so many folk use.
There are several other so-called ‘cheating’ movements which offer safer,
stronger and more efficient ways of overcoming a load.

A brief aside — If HIT or ‘Superslow’ methods are indeed ‘better’ than
Olympic and other ballistic methods, can one explain how SIB adherents raise
a heavy bar from the ground to the shoulders? Do they always unload the bar,
slowly raise it with a reverse curl to the shoulders, place it on a rack,
add more weights and only then perform the exercise?)

In other words, the term ‘cheating’ may well have to be redefined.
Bodybuilders know that the term really means using a movement which
deviates from the traditional or classical form in some way such as
swinging the weights or moving parts of the body to assist one in overcoming
’sticking points’. Unfortunately, many other folk believe that cheating is a
breaking of some training law, a serious crime against the body or the unfair
use of some method that is frowned upon by the purists.

In Powerlifting and Olympic Weightlifting, the rules of competition DO
legislate against certain types of ‘cheating’ or illegal lifting techniques,
such as uneven extension of the elbows, not completing the movement, allowing
the bar to stop during a lift, and using series of up-and-down bounces to
complete some lifts.

In the common world of resistance training, no such laws exist, only
guidelines – ’strict’ movements are defined as such, but they are not the
only way of doing any given lift. Variations very soon become the lifeblood
of the trainee who moves out of novice ranks, so cheating is a highly
acceptable technique in the training compendium of anyone who is serious
about progressing.

However, cheating does not necessarily produce better results by allowing one
to use his/her ’strength curve’ more effectively – it may simply be that
cheating allows one to use a heavier load over a certain part of the
movement, especially during the eccentric lowering phase, which is often
implicated in enhanced hypertrophy and strength production (though not so if
used for too long or too frequently). Ballistic forms of ‘cheating’ can
elicit a more powerful myotatic stretch reflex and produce greater muscle
tension with greater potential for enhancing strength and RFD (Rate of Force
Development).

It is really interesting to see how much more can lie in an apparently
simple and time-worn concept such as cheating – no wonder the world of
strength conditioning is so fascinating! There is always something new
lurking under the surface of everything that we often take for granted, even
after years of training and research. Thank goodness we now have the
Internet to allow ideas to be tested and disseminated far more rapidly than
ever before!

Mel Siff

Dr Mel Siff discusses some resistance training fundementals, as taken from his yahoo group at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/supertraining. This is an extract from his landmark textbook – Supertraining.

RESISTANCE TRAINING FOR DIFFERENT PURPOSES

Siff MC Supertraining 2000 Ch 1.1.1

The regimes of resistance training classically used to produce strength,
power, muscular endurance or muscle hypertrophy may be summarised in the form
of Table 1.1 of recommendations based on research and experience (Note that
this table refers to dynamic and not isometric training regimes).

This scheme, however, does not take into account the complexity of the
phenomenon of strength or the other strength-related qualities of
neuromuscular performance, such as strength-speed, explosive strength,
flexibility-strength and strength-endurance.

It is the major objective of this book to investigate the scope of sport
specific strength training in far greater depth than implied by the
generalised scheme of Table 1.1 and thereby enable the exercise professional
to apply this information in practice……

TABLE 1.1 This table summarises all the intensities, reps, sets, durations
and tempos that traditionally are considered to produce qualities such as
hypertrophy, power and strength.

Later in this text, it will be shown that the effective and safe prescription
of resistance training should begin with an understanding of force-time and
related curves concerning the patterns of force production in sport and
resistance training (this is what I call “Biomechanics as an Ergogenic Aid”.)
On this basis we can identify several major objectives of strength
training, namely:

* To increase maximal or absolute strength
* To increase explosive strength (large force in minimal time)
* To increase the Rate of Force Production
* To enable the muscles to generate large forces for a given period
* To enable the muscles to sustain small forces for a prolonged period
* To increase muscle and connective tissue hypertrophy

The summary of training approaches given by Table 1.1 may be adequate for the
average personal trainer or coach dealing with the average client or lower
level athlete, but it needs to be expanded upon to take into account the
objectives stated above. In particular, it needs to distinguish between
methods concentrating on neural adaptation versus the different types of
hypertrophy and muscle endurance. This is done at length in later chapters.

Methods involving a large training volume (many repetitions) are referred to
as extensive methods and any phase which relies on a high volume of low
resistance training is referred to as an extensification or accumulation
phase. Conversely, high intensity, low volume methods are known as intensive
methods and a phase comprising this type of training is referred to as an
intensification phase. The early stages of training usually begin with an
extensive phase to lay the foundation for the greater demands imposed by the
subsequent intensive phase with heavy resistance and few repetitions (Fig
1.3). In fact, the long-term training system known as periodisation is based
on cyclically alternating extensive and intensive phases of exercise chosen
to timeously enhance given components of fitness such as strength,
strength-speed and strength-endurance (see Chapters 1.14, 5.5 & 7.5)……

The traditional approaches to strength conditioning usually regard the
following variables as the most important in a weight training programme:

* magnitude of the load
* number of repetitions
* number of sets

Training programmes based entirely on these variables, however, are seriously
incomplete and limited in their long-term effectiveness, especially as a form
of supplementary training for other sports. Factors such as the following
must also be taken into consideration:

* the type of strength fitness required
* the type of muscle contraction involved (isometric, concentric, eccentric)
* the speed of movement over different phases of movement
* the acceleration at critical points in the movement
* the rest intervals between repetitions, sets and workouts
* active versus passive rest/recuperation intervals
* the sequence of exercises
* the relative strength of agonists and antagonists, stabilisers and movers
* the development of optimal static and dynamic range of movement
* the strength deficit of given muscle groups
* the training history of the individual
* the injury history of the individual
* the level of sports proficiency of the individual.

The last-mentioned factor is of exceptional importance, because the advanced
athlete responds to a given training regime very differently from a novice.
For instance, the exact sequencing of strength, strength-speed and
hypertrophy means in a workout or microcycle is of little consequence during
the first weeks or months of a beginner’s training, but is very important to
a more experienced athlete. Moreover, loads as small as 40% of 1RM can
significantly enhance the strength of a beginner, but have no strengthening
effect on an elite athlete…

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Mel Siff
http://www.melsiff.com

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